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Injury hampers Mattias Ekholm’s season: 2024-25 Edmonton Oilers player review

Originally posted on Oilersnation | By Zach Laing | Last updated Jul 17, 2025 9:00 AM ET

Welcome to my annual player review series, where I dive into the Edmonton Oilers season player-by-player. We’ll look back at the season that was, what kind of impact each player had, and what we could see from them next season. You can read about the analytics behind my analysis here.

Via The Nation Network

It was a tale of two seasons for Mattias Ekholm. One on hand, his regular season was, to the surprise of no one, tremendous. While his offensive game from a boxcars stand point could’ve been better, seeing a noticable dip in his output from previous seasons in terms of scoring per hour, the underlying metrics were solid.

He was among the best Oilers in terms of shot attempt share, scoring chance share and expected goal share, though there were noticable dips in terms of his actual goal share, likely highlighted by low on-ice shooting and save percentages.

Still, his individual impacts were nothing short of tremendous. He drove offence at a seven percent rate above league average, defence at a nine percent rate above league average and penalty kill play at a four percent rate above league average, according to HockeyViz. His overall impacts were double that of a mid-range first-pairing defenceman, being a positive in nearly every facet of the game.

But the injury bug bit Ekholm hard. Shaken up late in the regular season, he returned for an April 11th game against the San Jose Sharks, looking shaky in the three shifts he took before leaving the game. This, all the while, having dealt with some kind of illness from the new year on that took time to shake.

A groin injury would sideline him through nearly all of the first three rounds of the playoffs, returning for Game 5 against the Dallas Stars, as the Oilers advanced to the Stanley Cup Final. Ekholm would play the entirety of the series, but it was crystal clear he was still hurt. It felt as though there were more blunders in his game than Oilers fans had seen since he arrived in February 2023, and his underlying numbers in the playoffs highlight that.

Simply put, the Oilers were caved when he was on the ice.

That’s incredibly unlike what had been seen from Ekholm in years past, and heading into a contract year in 2025-26, there’s no denying he’s going to be a player hungry to make a big impact.